A Case for Watching Twin Peaks Through a Feminist Lens
I spent years refusing to watch Twin Peaks . In every film class, pretentious dudes scoffed at the fact that I had never seen it. My friends’ hipster boyfriends told me it was a crime that I wouldn’t watch it. That just made me dig my heels in harder. In all honesty, there was a case for me to watch it. Classic science fiction and bizarre aesthetics have been my thing since I discovered the Twilight Zone New Year’s Eve marathon in middle school. I was a feminist and riot grrl at heart, though, and would think of Bikini Kill’s song “Fuck Twin Peaks!” based on band members’ resentments towards their neighbors’ viewing parties for a show about a hot dead girl . It was the Game of Thrones of their time: a trendy show that relied heavily on violence against women for dramatic effect*. People they didn’t quite want to be friends with would spend all week talking about it. Twenty years later, cishet men were the only people that continuously that I had to watch Twin Peaks . I wasn’t going to bend to that pressure.
And then I did. I don’t remember why I started watching the series; Probably a mixture of boredom, curiosity, and running out of things to watch on Netflix. Maybe it was my constant desire to understand every pop culture reference. I watched the first few episodes and I got the appeal, but it still didn’t excite me on anything but a superficial level. I decided to just power through and see if it grew on me. Somehow, I got hooked. I finished the series, watched the prequel film, Fire Walk With Me , and anxiously awaited 2018’s return season. I even read the fucking companion literature. When I looked back on how the hell this had happened to me, I realized that the character of Laura Palmer spoke to me on a deep, feminist level.
Laura Palmer is not just a pretty dead girl, contrary to how the show was advertised and what the Film Bros may think. Laura Palmer is a more present and complex character than anyone else on the show, and she subverts nearly every cliche that would usually be applied to a female murder victim. She is not a passive victim, but she has survived abuse and trauma. She sits at the intersection of the virgin/whore dichotomy.
Popular crime media usually makes clear to the audience whether or not a female victim “deserved” her fate. They are either pure, innocent, and virginal, abused by those around them and a victim of circumstance, or they are worldly, wild women that enjoy sex with multiple partners, overindulge in substances, and get themselves into the situations that ultimately lead to their demise. In reality, no person fits into just one of these boxes, and neither does Laura Palmer. Laura is beautiful, kind, and gentle. She volunteers for Meals on Wheels, gets good grades and tutors those in need. She also has a coke habit and multiple boyfriends. She is beautiful and sweet, but she profits off of the way those traits are commodified by performing sex work. She engages in activities that are traditionally seen as immoral, but her character and strength remain uncorrupted. She is not being forced into any of these activities. She chooses them, and is nevertheless depicted as a whole person with both good and bad qualities.
Laura Palmer’s struggles are real issues, many of which almost all women and gender expansive people face — sexual violence, parental abuse, abusive partnerships, depression, and drug addiction. Although her death has supernatural elements, it is ultimately the result of (spoilers) sexual abuse and parental abuse from her father. The Twin Peaks story arc never suggests that Laura is at fault for her own death, or that she could have prevented it by embracing her innocent and compliant side. She is just a human being that is reacting to the forces in her life as best she can. This treatment of Laura is especially evident in Fire Walk With Me and 2018’s Twin Peaks: The Return , which both look deeper into Laura’s lived experiences, focusing on the days leading up to her murder and her legacy rather than just the immediate aftermath of her killing.
Laura Palmer is more than just a singular person. She represents the cycles of abuse and patriarchy that afflict women, femmes, and gender expansive people. The entire town of Twin Peaks and all the relationships within it center around the complexity and reality of abuse, but Laura’s story focuses attention on it. She is the town of Twin Peaks. She represents duality — both the purity and potential of the community and also the seedy, secretive underbelly. In the supernatural terms of the series, Laura Palmer is both the White Lodge and the Black Lodge. She is so much more than just a pretty dead girl.
There are other feminist characters and moments in Twin Peaks, but Laura Palmer is the crux of it all. She is the center of all exploration and character development that happens within the show’s world, and she is the basis for my argument that Twin Peaks can and should be enjoyed through a feminist, analytical lens. It should also be criticized through this lens, because there is plenty that is problematic about it. Laura Palmer subverts many of the dead girl tropes, but she is still a pretty white girl. One wonders how the character would be treated if she were Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC), or if she were not a stunning homecoming queen. Twin Peaks ignores the fact that women of color, trans women, queer women, and disabled women face compounded oppressions and abuse without ever finding the justice and voice that Laura does. The show is set in Washington state, a place with much more diversity than many are willing to admit, and also a place with a deep-seated history of racism. Twin Peaks is white as fuck and, at times, transparently racist, and it does not address anything pertaining to race in its unpacking of the good and evil sides of society.
This all leaves me questioning whether Twin Peaks is intentionally feminist at all. Clearly David Lynch is problematic in his treatment of women. He revels in showing the realities of abuse, and almost always centers traditionally attractive white women. Showing these realities is valuable, but when the depiction refuses to be intersectional, touches on the lived trauma of so many people, and is coming from a cishet white man, the message can become muddied and misogynistic. The women become his tools to create provocative art rather than autonomous human beings. There is no easy answer as to how to process problematic art that resonates with you, and how to separate the art from the artist’s potential intentions. There is value and substance in watching Lynch’s work from a feminist perspective, however, if it is paired with an exploration of these questions.
Contrary to popular, hipster belief, Twin Peaks is not great because David Lynch is a genius that can do no wrong, or because Kyle McLaughlin is just so damn charming as Agent Cooper. Its faults don’t just lie in the fact that the network toned Lynch’s vision down or that the second season became a hot mess. It is valuable because the character of Laura Palmer, and the surrounding town’s reaction to her, provoke timeless, nuanced analysis. The positive and negative points of the show give way to discussion of how realistic portrayals of women make sci-fi and fantasy more poignant, how we can make the genre more intersectional, and how women and gender expansive people can use the genre to give voice to our lived traumas. If we can see ourselves reflected in a show that wasn’t even made for us, that may very well just be accidentally feminist, imagine what we can do when we become the showrunners. Laura Palmer only shows us the beginnings of what representation can look like, but she fuels the fight to take over industries traditionally dominated by white males in order to tell our own stories. Maybe that’s why the pretentious film school dudes are so insistent on us watching Twin Peaks their way.
*https://www.thefader.com/2013/06/12/interview-kathleen-hanna-and-kathi-wilcox-of-bikini-kill
